UK: Wildfires will begin: An interview with Toby Shone

Posted on 2025/09/18 - 2025/09/18 by darknights

1st June 2025

The former political prisoner talks about his anarchism, the 325 project and resisting the physical and mental jails that surround us all.

~ Interviewed by Elizabeth Vasileva ~

You recently spoke about the importance of solidarity and connections, between prisoners and with their supporters on the outside. Can you give us any examples of this kind of mutual or collective empowerment in the pushback against prison’s continuous repression?

Shortly before I was released in 2024, violent cell searches by a tactical unit of prison guards known as the National Search Team took place on C-wing of HMP Garth in Leyland, where I was being held. The NST took over the wing with dogs and riot gear. Cell by cell the raid took place with a lot of pointlessly brutal drama. In ones and twos we were handcuffed and placed in a locked wet room. Some prisoners were beaten, abused and a lot of our things were trashed. Some of the guys fought back, flooded their cells, banged their doors or played music really loud as a protest. The next day the whole wing refused to go back into their cells after the early morning unlock hour. As a cacophonous and unruly mob we demanded the immediate return of seized items, the replacement of damaged items and denounced the violence. This lead to the screws backing off. There was nothing at that moment that the screws could do because we all acted together, and without any leader. At the end of the lunch period, the stop-out ended.

Similar things happened in my experience when one of the prisoners was killed by depression or hopelessness. Demonstrations outside the prisons where I was held also were a strong experience that had an impact upon the guards and us. Especially when the fireworks exploded across the night sky and the comrades outside were militant. I found other prisoners to be generally supportive of each other in the roughly anti-system and criminal environment. Whenever I was transferred or moved to a different cell, the local guys usually would come to check if I was okay and if I needed anything. I helped other guys with their legal cases or prison admin, and tried to find common points of interest and subversion. We’d try to back each other, and if I had some problem, the guys would be voicing their demands too. There’s refusals and kick-offs being made in most of the prisons around the country each day about conditions and treatment. I lost track of the number of prison labour refusals and walkouts I heard about when I was inside, they are very common, as is getting on the netting that separates the landings to protest about treatment and poor conditions.

When I heard that comrades outside were carrying out revolutionary solidarity, that is when I felt our power inside the prison, I can say. From hearing about the direct actions with the Adream case in Chile, France, Italy, Indonesia and around the world, to the phone-call interventions that I was able to make from inside prison to meetings of comrades on the outside, I could feel the warmth from the comrades. Also knowing about the censored letters and books, the solidarity funds and benefit events, it was great.

For readers who don’t know 325, what can you tell us about the project and its content?

325 is an anarchist network of counter-information and direct action. In November 2020, Dutch counter-terrorist police took down the nostate.net server which held the 325 website, upon request from their German and English colleagues. The website was a long-running information clearing house of general news, reports, communiques, publications, event listings, etc. Mostly the website covered Europe, Latin America and South East Asia. 325 is also a hard-copy magazine which comes out on an intermittent basis, and dozens of publications have been published by the collective, including the newsletter Dark Nights, which has it’s own website.

Over the years, 325 has participated in an evolving participatory international network based on direct action and the support of prisoners, as well as providing space for various tendencies of anarchist, anti-capitalist and anti-civilisation groups. In recent issues of the magazine the analysis has shifted slightly to the profound new industrial changes in production and technology, such as artificial intelligence, life sciences and automation. The archive of the 325 site is an important document of social and armed revolutionary struggle over a number of years in Europe and internationally. The project started in 2003 and continues. Continue reading “UK: Wildfires will begin: An interview with Toby Shone” →

II Jornadas contra el sistema tecnoindustrial – Madrid, Espanya

Posted on 2025/06/17 by darknights

II Jornadas contra el sistema tecnoindustrial

Ateneo Libertario La Garra – Madrid
Calle Pico del Moncayo 22
Metro Puente de Vallekas

Junio

Viernes 20
19.00Hrs. Charla-Debate: “ Resistencia contra la nube: Impacto ambiental de las macrogranjas de datos” A cargo de Tu nube seca mi rio

Sábado 20
12.00Hrs Charla-Debate: “Perspectivas y experiencias de la lucha en defensa del territorio en Cantabria”
14.00Hrs. Comedor 100% Vegetariano
17.00Hrs. Taller “Un uso más seguro de los smartphone”
19.00.Hrs. Charla-Debate “La crítica anarquista de la ideología-La abolición de la esclavitud moderna” A cargo de Jason McQuinn

Domingo 21
12.00Hrs. Proyección del documental: “Nada nos detendrá: ZAD del Amassada”
17.00Hrs. Charla Debate: Guerra robotizada e Inteligencia Artificial
19.00Hrs Charla-Debate: ¿qué es el sistema tecno industrial?

Bandung, West Java, Indonesia: “Reject the National Army law”, “No Rules, Just Chaos”, and “Burn World Bank” wrote by a group of informal affinity

Posted on 2025/03/22 by darknights

We are responsible for the burning of Two Hana Bank ATM machines, the Hana Bank office building, a capitalist-owned advertising videotron, and a motor vehicle belonging to the Indonesian National Army. The arson occurred after a space occupation carried out by demonstrators in the aftermath of a demonstration against the passage of the Indonesian National Army Law (TNI law), the arson occurred in Bandung, West Java on Friday night 21/03/2025.

The action carried out by the demonstrators in front of the Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) was not ignored at all by anti-riot police, despite the throwing of molotov cocktails, propane, stones and firecrackers into the veranda of the building. Until in the end, we chose direct action by burning at several points above.

We are completely beyond the authority of the language of the state and capitalism, we are irrationality, we are a form of the illogicality of the authority of the language itself. We are one of the informal organizations of the end of the world who do not believe in the coming of enlightenment for tomorrow, because for us the future is a new form of suffering. We are a fire that devours entire city buildings at night. We do not believe in the revolution of the left and other social anarchists. We are writers and poets, insurrection is poetry, poetry is insurrection.

Death to The State!
Death to The National Army!
Death to an Entire Civilization!
Burn The World Bank!
Long Live The Conspiracy of Cells of Fire!
Long Live The Free Association of Autonomous Fire!
Long Live FAI/IRF Long Live Anarchy!

Continue reading “Bandung, West Java, Indonesia: “Reject the National Army law”, “No Rules, Just Chaos”, and “Burn World Bank” wrote by a group of informal affinity” →

Heraklion, Greece: Incendiary attack against a bus belonging to the GEK TERNA conglomerate

Posted on 2025/02/18 by darknights

What a beautiful sight a burning bus is!

The GEK TERNA conglomerate counts among its losses a staff transport bus, on 24/01/2025, due to arson. A giant company that is responsible for the greatest disasters in the Cretan environment, the Greek territory, but also internationally.

It does business and secures its profits by destroying forests and leveling mountains. It uproots people, animals and plants.

Capitalism has its own ethics: profit above all else. Arguments, logic and justice are unnecessary. As long as they’re profitable, they’ll keep going, even if they leave behind nothing but debris.

It’s not the metal sheets or the tires that are burning and smelling, it’s not the financial damage, even though they make us happy. The fire speaks for itself. It chases the sky, however elusive and distant it may seem. From the spark to the flame, and from the flame to the fire. May we bring fire to the cities, may we burn to ashes the ethics of profit and its supporters.

Source: Blessed Is The Flame

Thessaloniki, Greece: Against anthropocentrism and metropolitan domination, on the occasion of the Flyover

Posted on 2025/02/18 by darknights

“Flyover” is part of a programme of 30 projects aimed at transforming Thessaloniki into a “metropolis of the Balkans”. Through it, a complex of environmental destruction, capitalist expansion and tightening social control is revealed. Opposing this design through a radical perspective allows us to attribute a material basis to a system that would like us to believe is unmistakable.

The project includes the overhaul of 13.5 km of Thessaloniki’s regional road and the addition of a 4 km Flyover, for which 187 hectares of the Sheih Su forest will be destroyed. To ensure social acceptance of the Flyover project, managed by the AVAX-Mytilineos consortium, a conscious green-washing practice is used. Its main argument is better regulation of traffic to reduce CO2 concentrations in the city. However, it is proven that larger transport infrastructures tend to increase traffic. In addition, Flyover will further cement the nature of the area, harming fauna and flora and favouring the ‘heat island’ effect, i.e. the rise in local temperature due to the heat-absorbing property of the cement.

In other words, this is all bullshit! But even if the project was viable, it would remain problematic. This is an issue with important socio-political implications which should not be dealt with solely from an environmental point of view.

Control: the spacetime of the metropolis

Capitalism needs infrastructure to ensure its enforcement and maintenance. Infrastructures like Flyover help to further control the movement of people and therefore define the relationships we build with each other.

In recent decades, global capitalism has been reorganized around regional metropolises. A network of production units that destroy the earth, exploiting the lives of humans and non-animals. With rural reforms and the use of land for infrastructure, quality of life and employment opportunities are becoming increasingly scarce in rural areas, forcing their inhabitants to move to cities. And in turn, this exponential growth of metropolises leads to further destruction of natural areas. The continuous expansion of the metropolises strengthens the power, strengthening our dependence on the capitalist-state system.

As the metropolis expands, city centres are refined and standardised. What used to be a place of residence, meeting and organisation, it is now becoming a showcase for attracting business and tourism. In the metropolis, the city itself is a product. Those who disturb the superficial ideal, the “undesirables”, the working class, the immigrants and the squatters, are pushed to the periphery. This ‘cleansing’ is made possible as roads, the metro and other modern means of transport allow displaced people to move daily from the degraded neighborhoods where they live to the shops, offices and factories where they are exploited. And as the metropolis expands, so does the portion of their day devoted to commuting. As a result, leisure time is constantly being reduced, absorbed by overtime work and transport.

At the same time, public spaces become smaller, more controlled, uninviting (when they simply do not disappear), or are replaced by cafeteria terraces, parking lots or Christmas markets. The “third places” are exhausted, with every corner of the city being used for financial profit. There is no place for socialisation without honor, let alone political organisation, which is increasingly difficult as spaces that offer alternatives (squats, universities, squares, etc.) are attacked. The only form of protest that is accepted is not only the non-violent, but the one that either does not disturb the production-consumption cycle or actively feeds it. Political discussions are transferred to the online world, social media posts replace our presence on the streets and walls of the city. We are building our own surveillance. Our opposition to the system is expressed solely through our lifestyle, from where and what we consume. Therefore, activism, as it lacks its necessary social character, turns into individual consumer practice, supplying dominant systems instead of opposing them.

So, through the control of space and time facilitated by roads and modern transportation, governments direct our behaviors to prevent any disruption to the capitalist machine.

Moreover, for this transport system to work, it requires a high level of organisation and specialisation of work that only the state can provide. It creates a vicious circle where it is at once the means, the consequence and the source of capitalist expansion. It operates in every aspect of the economy: urbanisation, fossil fuel extraction, agribusiness and nature management. A chain reaction, where the capitalist-state system spreads like a virus until it consumes every living creature, every piece of land and wildlife.

Disconnection: the nature of the metropolis

To assert and maintain its dominance, the capitalist-state system must appear as the logical evolution of our civilisation, inevitable if not desirable. And to trap our consciousness, it shapes our horizon.

In the world of the metropolises, the ground is covered by behemoths and shopping malls, motorways and railways, parking lots and data centres. People penetrate the mountains with tunnels and dig the land for minerals. They mix the limestone and the clay they get with sand from exhausted beaches to make cement and concrete. Containers and giant fishing boats empty the seas, while planes fill the skies. And as capitalism colonises wildlife, the smell of fresh air, the sense of grass and the songs of the birds disappear from our daily lives. In the smell of exhaust fumes, in the sounds of car horns and in the hasty crowd of the city-worker, we find isolation and alienation. By separating us from the natural world, the capitalist-state system separates us from each other.

In the name of the god of profit, it plunders fauna and flora, reducing them to resources that are sacrificed on the altar of civilisation. Non-human animals become meat, winds become kilowatts, trees become oxygen, soil becomes building materials, people become labour. Everyone and everything becomes a commodity.

Although capitalism has driven ecosystem destruction to unprecedented levels, most civilisations have been promoting human domination over other species for centuries. Anthropocentrism, the idea that human civilisation is separate from nature, that man comes first, allowed them to naturalise the unbridled exploitation of the rest of the living beings. A multitude of dipoles runs through our world to ensure the machine runs smoothly: male-female, white-non-white, civilisation-nature.

Many environmental discussions don’t question anthropocentrism and therefore don’t challenge the system. But it is not about “conserving our natural resources” to ensure the future of humanity, nor about “defending nature” as an unattainable ideal separated from us. It’s about refusing to stay on paths that others have mapped out for us. The non-human world is not ours to destroy or protect.

WE ARE NATURE DEFENDING ITSELF

THE DEFENSE OF THE FORST IS SELF-DEFENSE

Defend Seih Sou

defendseihsou@espiv.net

Source: Blessed Is The Flame

Toulouse, France: Solidarity fire with Kyriakos Ximitiris and the prosecuted anarchists after the explosion in the apartment in Ampelokipi

Posted on 2024/12/04 - 2024/12/04 by darknights

In response to the call from the “assembly of solidarity with the imprisoned, fugitive and persecuted fighters” in Athens, on the night of November 17 to 18, 2024, a fire was set to an MT Energies vehicle, a photovoltaic solar panel company. (mtenergiefrance.com).

Whether in France, Greece, or elsewhere, green capitalism allows civilization to consume ever more resources, territories, and lives. Let’s burn it.
Without sharing the revolutionary ideas of Kyriakos Ximitiris and part of his entourage, the hatred against what oppresses us is shared.

Solidarity with Marianna, Dimitra, and Nikos Romanos! Strength to you

Kyriakos Ximitiris, may your fire always burn.

Source: lille.indymedia

Indonesia: Burning of campus building in East Java in solidarity with Nikos Romanos and all anarchist prisoners

Posted on 2024/12/04 by darknights

Note: english translation is only a part of the whole communique

“A few days ago, precisely on November 22nd. I personally, who am not affiliated with any affinities, would like to give a communique.

That there was a burning of a building at one of the leading campuses on the south coast of East Java. I want to claim that the action was my doing.

What I did was purely solidarity with distant friends who have never met face to face. Especially to Nikos Romanos, Der Enzig and all the other anarchist prisoners. This is total revenge on the ward that gave birth to the disaster, namely the campus. I am isolated and not caught.

The nonsense of academics and activists does not end our suffering.

The campus and all its cronies did not provide the correct results of the crime scene investigation other than electrical short circuits and cigarette butts. But as an individualist I claim it is my action. With a little spark everything can burn.”

——–

Beberapa hari lalu, tepatnya pada tgl 22 November. Saya secara pribadi yang tak tergabung dengan affinitas mana pun, ingin memberikan komunike.

Bahwa terdapat pembakaran gedung di salah satu kampus terkemuka di pesisir selatan JATIM. Saya ingin mengklaim bahwa aksi tersebut merupakan ulah saya.

Kegetiran terhadap dunia Yang semakin carut marut dan mengalami distopia total. Saya sadar bahwa tempat ini merupakan bangsal yang melahirkan monster penghancur apa pun yang ada di muka bumi ini. Selain kekesalan. Apa yang saya lakukan adalah murni solidaritas pada kawan jauh yang tak pernah saling tatap muka secara langsungnya. Terkhusus kepada Nikos Romanos, Der Enzig dan semua tahanan anarkis lainnya. Ini adalah pembalasan total kepada bangsal yang melahirkan bencana yaitu kampus.

Saya terisolir dan tak terjaring.

Omong kosong akademis dan para aktivis tak membuat kita selesai pada penderitaan ini.

Pihak kampus dan segala kroninya tak memberikan hasil olah TKP yang benar selain konsleting listrik dan puntung rokok. Tapi saya sebagai seorang individualis saya mengklaim itu adalah aksi saya. Dengan sedikit percikan api semua bisa terbakar.

FIRE TO THE PRISON! BURN CIVILIZATION!

To Produce or Not to Produce – Kevin Tucker

Posted on 2024/11/22 - 2024/11/22 by darknights

To Produce or Not to Produce
Class, Modernity and Identity

Class is a social relationship. Stripped to its base, it is about economics. It’s about being a producer, distributor or an owner of the means and fruits of production. No matter what category any person is, it’s about identity. Who do you identify with? Or better yet, what do you identify with? Every one of us can be put into any number of socio-economic categories. But that isn’t the question. Is your job your identity? Is your economical niche?

Let’s take a step back. What are economics? My dictionary defines it as: “the science of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.” Fair enough. Economies do exist. In any society where there is unequal access to the necessities of life, where people are dependent upon one another (and more importantly, institutions) there is economy. The goal of revolutionaries and reformists has almost always been about reorganizing the economy. Wealth must be redistributed. Capitalist, communist, socialist, syndicalist, what have you, it’s all about economics. Why? Because production has been naturalized, science can always distinguish economy, and work is just a necessary evil. It’s back to the fall from Eden where Adam was punished to till the soil for disobeying god. It’s the Protestant work ethic and warnings of the sin of ‘idle hands’. Work becomes the basis for humanity. That’s the inherent message of economics. Labor “is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man himself.” That’s not Adam Smith or God talking (at least this time), that’s Frederick Engels. But something’s very wrong here. What about the Others beyond the walls of Eden? What about the savages who farmers and conquistadors (for all they can be separated) could only see as lazy for not working?

Are economics universal? Let’s look back at our definition. The crux of economy is production. So if production is not universal, then economy cannot be. We’re in luck, it’s not. The savage Others beyond the walls of Eden, the walls of Babylon, and the gardens: nomadic gatherer/hunters, produced nothing. A hunter does not produce wild animals. A gatherer does not produce wild plants. They simply hunt and gather. Their existence is give and take, but this is ecology, not economy. Every one in a nomadic gatherer/hunter society is capable of getting what they need on their own. That they don’t is a matter of mutual aid and social cohesiveness, not force. If they don’t like their situation, they change it. They are capable of this and encouraged to do so. Their form of exchange is anti-economy: generalized reciprocity. This means simply that people give anything to anyone whenever. There are no records, no tabs, no tax and no running system of measurement or worth. Share with others and they share in return. These societies are intrinsically anti-production, anti-wealth, anti-power, anti-economics. They are simply egalitarian to the core: organic, primal anarchy.

But that doesn’t tell how we became economic people. How work became identity. Looking at the origins of civilization does. Civilization is based off production. The first instance of production is surplus production. Nomadic gatherer/hunters got what they needed when they needed it. They ate animals, insects, and plants. When a number of gatherer/hunters settled, they still hunted animals and gathered plants, but not to eat. At least not immediately.

In Mesopotamia, the cradle of our now global civilization, vast fields of wild grains could be harvested. Grain, unlike meat and most wild plants, can be stored without any intensive technology. It was put in huge granaries. But grain is harvested seasonally. As populations expand, they become dependent upon granaries rather than what is freely available. Enter distribution. The granaries were owned by elites or family elders who were in charge of rationing and distributing to the people who filled their lot. Dependency means compromise: that’s the central element of domestication. Grain must be stored. Granary owners store and ration the grain in exchange for increased social status. Social status means coercive power. This is how the State arose.

In other areas, such as what is now the northwest coast of the United States into Canada, store houses were filled with dried fish rather than grain. Kingdoms and intense chiefdoms were established. The subjects of the arising power were those who filled the storehouses. This should sound familiar. Expansive trade networks were formed and the domestication of plants and then animals followed the expansion of populations. The need for more grain turned gatherers into farmers. The farmers would need more land and wars were waged. Soldiers were conscripted. Slaves were captured. Nomadic gatherer/hunters and horticulturalists were pushed away and killed. Continue reading “To Produce or Not to Produce – Kevin Tucker” →

AGRO-CRUST XII MAY 11, 2024 D.I.Y. FESTIVAL IN KAN SEITAN EN/ES/CA

Posted on 2024/05/02 - 2024/05/02 by darknights

AGRO-CRUST XII MAY 11, 2024
D.I.Y. FESTIVAL IN KAN SEITAN (PEDRINYÁ/CRESPIÁ)
[Girona area, Catalonia/X-pain]

Hi compas & friends!

As in recent years the Agro-Crust has been reduced to just one day/night of activities. We are all aware that the capabilities of the anarchist movement have decreased during this time in these territories quite a bit.

The impact of technocracy and the pandemic among others causes have caused many problems (climate, economic and social etc.). Capitalist states choose by wars and repression to save their rotten system. The consequences of all this are catastrophic, especially in the poor areas of the planet, but not exclusively. Droughts caused mainly by agriculture and industrial livestock, deforestation and destruction of ecosystems also has its impacts in the territories of the ‘first world’ states.

The strength of the struggles and resistance of every corner of the world planet depend on many factors that have to be tested locally to be effective in all the senses.

Agro-Crust has always been an opportunity for anarchists to debate, exchange, experiment and express your thoughts, criticisms in different ways and experiences. We will continue forward on that path always made freedom for everyone, in support of the struggles for total liberation against all authority and domination and for the destruction of all its cages, walls and bars!

You are all invited to participate in the Kan Seitan event!
Rural and wild self-management! Do it Yourself!
For any proposal, doubt or question, you can write to our email: liberacionomuerte@yahoo.com

Health & Anarchy

FREEDOM TO ALL PRISONERS AND FUGITIVES!

PS: We send this flyer of the confirmed bands:
KONCERTOS: Saturday May 11 at 8 p.m.

DEMOFOBIA (Hardcore-Punk Reus)
K.O.MAKABRA (Hardcore-Punk Reus)
DELICIA BILIS (Hardcore Barna)
ZIRT-ZART (Hardcore-Punk Gipuzkoa/Basque Country)
STORB (Hardcore-Punk Sta.Koloma dF)
KOMEMELKOÑO (Punk-Rock Barna)

Thanks for sharing (don’t post on social media please!).
Soon the final poster with all the activities.

Continue reading “AGRO-CRUST XII MAY 11, 2024 D.I.Y. FESTIVAL IN KAN SEITAN EN/ES/CA” →

‘THE SUBVERSIVE WRITTEN WORD’ by anarchist prisoner Toby Shone

Posted on 2024/04/25 - 2024/04/25 by darknights

A contribution by anarchist comrade Toby Shone from Garth prison (UK), for the debate “Thought and Action (“Pensiero e Azione”) – Repressive Attacks on the Anarchist Written Word” organized for the Tattoo Circus in El Paso Occupato, Turin (Italy), March 9-10th, 2024.

THE SUBVERSIVE WRITTEN WORD

Dear comrades,

This is Toby Shone, an anarchist imprisoned in the operation Adream which was an antiterrorist investigation against the counter-information project 325. I am calling from a prison in northwest England, it’s a long term, high security prison, and the fact that we can steal these moments is very important.
As you may already know, Operation A-dream was a repressive attack by the UK state in which 3 collective housing projects, a family home and storage unit were raided by cops. I was accused of being an administrator of 325.nostate, which earned me 4 terrorist charges: section 2 (distribution of terrorist publications), section 15 (funding terrorism) and two counts of section 58 (possession of information which is likely to be useful for terrorist purposes). I was also accused of several direct actions and membership of FAI, ELF and ALF. Hundreds of police were involved in the simultaneous raids and despite this, only one of the comrades were briefly detained and subsequently released for lack of evidence. It’s clear through the conditions of imprisonment I am held under and the constant monitoring that an active investigation continues with tailings and surveillance of comrades on the outside along with observation of anarchist social spaces.

Why is this taking place? It’s because anarchism is a threat to the existing technocratic order, our direct-action groups have a palpable reality in however minimal way in comparison to the task to be done, and the counter-information constellation continues to shine in the dark nights and become easier to use and navigate. Anarchist publishing is viewed as being an unacceptable endeavour by the police and intelligence services. Reporting on anarchist direct action, social struggles, and uprisings because it forms a narrative of subversion is arguably targeted with as much repression as that towards those who carry out the deeds that are being reported. It’s a strategy which has been in existence for a very long time. In the case of Operation Adream, the police was scared of the explicit anarchist insurrectionalist and anti-civilization rhetoric combined with the distribution of electronic and paper publications. During the interrogations a particular concern of the detectives was the purpose of anarchist paper publication. All the electronic documents have a digital forensic signature known as the hash value which can be tracked across the internet and devices even if deleted from those devices. Paper publications on the other hand, cannot be tracked as they are distributed – an investigation into them requires material forensics and a traditional police enquiry: this needs more resources, money, and personnel and especially the underground publishing initiatives which may have an irregular schedule of publishing and “informal” methods of distribution.

This brings us back to the purpose of anarchist publications: paper copies exist and have the power through being passed hand to hand to have an impactful material reality. They also accumulate forensic traces, the books, magazines, and pamphlets we are talking of, dangerous ideas, which can inspire our lives. Their time duration is different from those digital, and we can view that accordingly. With our publications, even if they are doomed to be in university libraries, mainstream bookshops, or worse, museums and art galleries, they always remain controversial and even illegal in some cases. Their purpose is social war and the destruction of the State. In the investigation files of Operation Adream, dozens of anarchist publications were cited many of which we may take for granted, that are freely available at anarchist bookfairs, squats, social centres and stalls at events. Yet to the police, special unit, and prosecutors these publications form part of an amorphous conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the establishment, which is correct, but not exactly in the perverse way that they wish to interpret it. To explain, we are often confronted by the repressive model that has a special function ascribed to theorists and writers, that of “leadership”. They are accused of giving orders and instructions and then cells or cadres then carry out those orders. I don’t need to tell you that this is an offense to anarchist practice, but it was a clear line of questioning put to me by the counter terrorist division. Does possession of 325 magazine indicate membership of an organization? Does that organization execute actions? And is that organisation part of a larger terrorist infrastructure? These are the types of questions bounced at me. With this scheming, marionettes of repression are formed, arranged in hierarchical structures which reflect their feverish minds. So, in those interrogations the investigators focused in some parts on questioning me about administrative functions, decision making flows, statistics figures, target demographics, research and linguistics, or translations. To the latter the cops wanted to know who was responsible for the translations, how they were organized, and who decided what should be translated.

At what level does the level of repression equate to that of our actions? For me, the answer is straight forward. The level of repression is currently far beyond that of the anarchist direct action. It’s the nature of State’s repression to aim to be overwhelming and our struggle is still only an active minority. In the UK the silence and lack of action highlights the social living death. But it was not always this way. And the future remains unwritten. That’s why police infiltration will continue to try to prevent for ruptures and individual attacks. It’s impossible to separate Operation Adream from the consequences of over a decade of anarchist direct action and social riots in Bristol. Although those things are at low ebb currently, it doesn’t mean that it will remain so. Anarchism remains part of the fabric of this South-West region. And where the reports, communiques and analysis are published will remain high in the list of targets for the State. The hundreds if not thousands of publishers across the world, part of a connectivity of contemporary anarchism, add to our ability to stay relevant and expansive.

Huge changes are taking place in society, and mass discontent has the possibility to form into a needed vital resistance. The new anarchist critique of high technology is cited by various intelligence agencies, State and private, as having the threatening ability to infect the population with a deep anger of the digital future. This future being planned by the bosses is a vast surveillance state which is part of the cybernetic matrix, where machines are taking the place of humans, and the artificial intelligence has inserted itself into every place it can be situated. Likewise, we can see human beings are becoming more machine-like, and their environment is degraded and polluted. Increasingly we can talk about the fact that many complete failures are taking place in various social systems, due to the ecological collapse and economic and post-industrial transformation. Huge territories are rapidly changing from floods, wildfires, draughts and intense storms. Unprecedented challenges are coming very quickly with harsh effects on critical points pertaining to agriculture, migration, division of labour, geopolitical conflicts and so on. Our publications and counter-information networks are a direct way in which we can communicate our analysis and methods of organization. Repression recognizes the danger of the contagion of this message, and the narrative which we possess. To the extent that they illegalize our publications and try to impose exemplary sentences is only a means to and end for them. And this is what we have always faced. If we are effective, we meet repression, prison, death. That’s what many comrades face across the world right now. Essentially some of us have been living under surveillance and investigation for so long, everything we do could be considered as crime, simply existing. That’s worth writing about and when we read and know more about what others are confronting and how, we can gain our power.

Lastly, I want to talk about the censorship I am facing here. Since it’s been a consistent feature of my imprisonment and is also part of the topic we’re discussing. Many comrades face problems with their correspondence and receiving publications. This is not unusual. But it’s worth saying here that I’ve been denied access to the majority of my correspondence and books which I am being sent. Even though I am facing denials by the prison administration that this is taking place, it most certainly is. This is the strength of our newsletters, our books, our letters to catch with comrades, that they make the enemy afraid. In my case, I’m also being denied socialist, autonomous-marxist and communist papers and books, which have been sent to me by those in solidarity from the radical left, as well as books on black history, transformative justice, and prison abolition. The very few anarchist books I have managed to receive I hold them close to my heart, here in my cell. Freedom is written with ink and our blood, like it always has been and will be. Value your books, your newspapers, your letters sent and received, combative memory persists, and we pass it to each new generation without efforts alone.
I’ll finish here and so I thank you for your energy and your attention, and a strong hug to all, and especially those under repression for the written word. For from the words come deeds, and that is the topic we’ve encountered today. Love and rage, thank you.

Toby,
Garth Prison, 4th of March 2024

The former political prisoner talks about his anarchism, the 325 project and resisting the physical and mental jails that surround us all.

To Produce or Not to Produce Class, Modernity and Identity

To Produce or Not to Produce
Class, Modernity and Identity